All Policy Analysis by Ehud Yaari

By supporting rebel progress in the south, Washington could put more pressure on Assad and his allies at relatively low cost, and perhaps turn the wavering Druze fully against the regime.

Hamas has long sought to stymie Egyptian control over the peninsula and keep its weapons smuggling routes open, but its latest opportunistic gamble on local jihadists carries wider dangers that should be nipped in the bud by sponsors Turkey and Qatar.

Putin's latest Middle Eastern moves are aimed not so much at expanding his front line of tensions with the West, but rather at making a deal by proving that he has acquired a lot of cards in the region.

With millions of dollars in Iranian funding, a marginal PIJ splinter faction is aiming to establish a powerful, Hezbollah-style proxy in Gaza.

Tehran's commitment to surrounding, besieging, and eliminating the 'Zionist entity' has not changed, and countering this goal will require pushing back against Iranian advances in Iraq, Syria, Jordan, and elsewhere.

A previously unpublished 're-engagement' proposal negotiated just before Israel's 2005 withdrawal from Gaza reveals some new twists in our understanding of the peace process.

Watch a panel discussion among leading international journalists following Vice President Biden's remarks to the Institute's 30th anniversary gala dinner.

In a September 10 television appearance, Hamas leader Mousa Abu Marzouk suggested that Hamas might engage in direct talks with the Israelis. The surprising comment, made following Hamas's costly summer military engagement in Gaza, reflected the group's desperate need for a period of calm, with its weapons stockpiles depleted and

Coordinated Israeli, Jordanian, and allied assistance in the south could boost the moderate Syrian rebels there, stave off an extremist takeover, and facilitate the ongoing international campaign against ISIS.

Despite the ambiguities in the new agreement, the uncertainty of its actual implementation, and the lack of clarity about what it might mean for Gaza, neither Hamas nor Fatah has an interest in aborting the reconciliation effort at the moment.

With Middle East players from North Africa through the Gulf focused on the twin challenges of radical Sunni jihadism and the fear of Iranian expansionism, the Israel-Hamas war was more a symptom than a trigger of regional developments. Still, repercussions from the fighting, the on-again/off-again ceasefires, and the political alignments